Friday, May 10, 2013

BM Hunter's AoE Future - Maximizing Beast Cleave Damage

Current State of the Union
In MoP 5.2, we have one big AoE choice with a few small variations.  You run as a Survival Hunter.  You lay down Multishots and get Serpent Spread.  You drop an Explosive Trap.  If you're rigged for AoE, you run with Thrill of the Hunt and slam those multishots in and toss in Barrage fire.  You also toss in free LnL ExShot procs.  If you are BM you do what you can, but you don't see the enemy health bars drop very fast.


BM's AoE Future
It is very likely that BM will have it's AoE buffed in MoP 5.3.  The big buff is coming from an increase to Beast Cleave damage.  It's going from a +30% to a +75% damage application.  This isn't going to require BM to have special builds to better AoE.  But you will want to do things a little better to maximize your AoE damage.

Maximizing BM Beast Cleave Damage
  1. Beast Cleave is a buff put on your pet that is short lived.  Have a timer bar to see that buff duration!  I recommend a NeedToKnow.
  2. Don't let the buff drop!  Multi-shot starts the buff.  Ensure that you have enough focus to multi-shot again so you can keep the buff up on your pet.
  3. Make sure to have your pet in range of the AoE mobs!  The redesigned Blink Strikes may help squeak out a bit less travel time.
  4. If you read the tooltips, Beast Cleave's damage makes the " pet's melee attacks also strike all other nearby enemy targets for 30% as much".  Soon that will be 75%.  So I currently pop Bestial Wrath to boost the pet damage by +20%.  DISCLAIMER: I don't know if this is applied only once to the pet's melee attacks or if it double-dips and is applied to the melee attacks and the bonus cleave attacks, or if it is applied to neither.  I've looked but only spent about twenty minutes trying to determine the benefit or non.  I'll need to be much more scientific and do it without any equipment that can proc with a nice quiet target dummy cluster. 
  5. In addition to macroing in Bestial Wrath with my BM's MultiShot, I also have it engage the enemy, send in my pet so it doesn't want to smack something else for a second or two, and kick off Rabid if it's off CD.  I also have it not complain noisily.
#showtooltip Multi-Shot
/startattack
/petattack
/petassist
/cast Multi-Shot
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/cast Rabid
/cast Bestial Wrath
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1

What Else Can BM Do for AoE?
  1. Remember to drop the explosive trap.
  2. Line up a nice barrage or glaive attack.
  3. If you have a DPS worm, you might experiment with burrow.
  4. Use Focus Fire conservatively as it drains your pet's Frenzy stacks. 

3 comments:

  1. Shouldn't you use BW before the MS to reduce the focus cost of the first MS?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm not sure how Bestial Wrath would reduce the focus cost of Multishot.

      That said, BM can go into a MS->CS->MS->CS rotation pretty easily to keep the Beast Cleave up.

      Delete
  2. Really useful digest of information - good for those who don't know and reminders for those who do.

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